Wednesday, August 18, 2010

A Very Upscale Basement

Big Business isn’t doing a very good job of job creation, so there’s a lot of attention on entrepreneurs and how to nurture start-up companies…for good reason:

2/3rds of new job creation comes from businesses less than five years old. Christopher GergenBull City Forward

Seven out of ten jobs in our state are created and sustained by small business.Tom CampbellNC Spin

Across the street at the American Tobacco campus they recently unveiled plans for a new workspace for entrepreneurs - the American Underground. It’s a clever and compelling use of basement real estate that allows for flex space and short-term leases…something that’s almost impossible to do with class A office space above ground. Also, the American Underground is designed for collaboration and shared services.

In my last post on Mark Cuban’s visit to Durham, I noted his advice to entrepreneurs: keep your costs low; live like a college student. American Underground meets that need, but it will definitely be a cut above dorm life…a very cool work environment.

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I'm VP of the Sports Group at Capitol Broadcasting Co. My office is in the Durham Bulls Athletic Park - a great place to work. (And wonderfully distracting!)

CBC owns the Bulls, operates four sports-talk radio stations in Raleigh and wralSPORTSfan.com. Our radio brands are The Fan, Buzz Sports Radio, The Ticket and ESPN Deportes. We are a partner with Learfield Sports at Wolfpack Sports Properties, and our TV stations connect viewers with NBC, Fox and ACC sports. Our radio stations are the RDU flagships for NC State, Duke Univ, the NHL Carolina Hurricanes and the Bulls.

We even built a basketball court at our American Tobacco complex in Durham and a play area for grown-ups! There's a brewery in the ballpark, too. It's work. It's play. I can't always tell the difference!?!